The point of Putin’s propaganda is not to persuade anyone, but to keep the viewer hooked and distracted—to disrupt Western narratives rather than provide a counternarrative. It is the perfect genre for conspiracy theories, which are all over Russian TV. When the Kremlin and its affiliated media outlets spat out outlandish stories about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in July—reports that characterized the crash as everything from an assault by Ukrainian fighter jets following U.S. instructions, to an attempted NATO attack on Putin’s private jet—they were trying not so much to convince viewers of any one version of events, but rather to leave them confused, paranoid, and passive—living in a Kremlin-controlled virtual reality that can no longer be mediated or debated by any appeal to ‘truth.’

“WASHINGTON ― A political group released a new video Monday of a counter-sting that has uncovered evidence of right-wing activists trying to sow chaos at Donald Trump’s inaugural ceremony, an effort to portray critics of Trump who march against him as violent fringe figures. The counter-sting, carried out by The Undercurrent and Americans Take Action, a project of a previous target of provocateur James O’Keefe, managed to surreptitiously record elements of O’Keefe’s network offering huge sums of money to progressive activists if they would disrupt the ceremony and “put a stop to the inauguration” and the related proceedings to such a degree that donors to the clandestine effort would “turn on a TV and maybe not even see Trump.” To have riots blot out coverage of Trump, the donor offered “unlimited resources,” including to shut down bridges into D.C. The Undercurrent, led by executive producer Lauren Windsor, is sponsored by American Family Voices, which was among a constellation of groups infiltrated by O’Keefe’s Project Veritas during the presidential campaign, an effort to link Democrats with voter fraud.”

“Our new president will flat out lie to us.” Maddow added, “He put out a written statement about what he learned in the briefing. And he blatantly, and overtly, bluntly, simply lied about what is in this report. Right before this report got publicly released so we could check ourselves and see that he was lying.” The Liberal Plug

The primitive nature of the narcissist’s dishonesty and his utter lack of conscience is incomprehensible to the civilized mind.

For Reference, here is a link to the declassified intelligence report. Click the
image.

Given what we know of the Russian Hack of the election we need to understand information as a weapon.

I watched #MSNBC this morning as various experts and news people discussed Trump’s strengths and weaknesses in his relationship with Vladimir Putin.

KellyAnn Conway arrived to give her opinion of Putin’s attack on the United States:

And I thought, how can we know the damage without a complete investigation of the facts?

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Russia worked “…to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,”

The report also describes: “… a vast Russian intelligence operation that extends from hacking both Democratic and Republican targets to propaganda campaigns to troll-fueled social media disinformation. It re-asserts the intelligence community’s findings that the Kremlin is behind breaches of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and even state election board websites. And the express intention of those operations, the report states, was to not only disrupt the American electoral process, but to elect Donald Trump.”Wired

Los Angeles Times Cartoon

That’s a serious crime against the American people.

Free and verified elections that produce a legitimately elected leader
is the heart of our Democracy.